This Is Sexual Harassment

I am so happy about the #metoo campaigning that I need to write on Whattawowworld now even though I was meant to write next time when the new updated blog site is up and running – hopefully very soon! But this is a perfect timing to open the mouth because right now we are talking about women’s sexual harassment globally. That’s great news! This is a serious thing that needs some coverage and we need to start talking about it to prevent the wide scale bullshit.

I personally feel deep anxiety about a case that happened around ten years ago. I had just stepped into advertising business, was a bit over twenty and working my first month in a respected agency. We had a company event and I was leaning towards the bar desk and waiting my drink to arrive when the boss of the company arrived instead and started grabbing my ass with care – very intensively. I froze up and was horrified. I was so young and had experienced nothing as nasty before so I didn’t know what to do! There was a clear difference in our status and power – and I felt like I was trapped. Finally I got my drink after a time of eternity and I took my chance to buzz off!

The only way I knew how to do deal with the incident was to sink and drink and just try to forget. But of course after the weekend some idiot at work decided to bring all that embarrassment up: when the boss came to our corner, he got to hear about Friday. “Well that was a gentle fatherly touch”, he said probably ashamed but understating the whole case. A gentle fatherly touch!!! FUCK YOU. I could show you a nice fatherly revenge today by bringing up your name and making you to feel all that embarrassment. This man is running a well-known big Finnish company and shows too often in the news: I feel disgusted every time I saw the dirty face – face of a great leader in public. But I am better and now I am stronger, so there is no point to be bitter about the past.

I don’t miss advertising business. Back when I was there, there was such a big gap in gender equity. The ad men never saw me creative as a young woman (except a few of them) and I didn’t even get a chance. When I was supposed to be mentored I never got a single advice. Because apparently the mentor didn’t know how to handle me, like that was something different. In fact, a young guy once replaced me. That felt fucking nice. All that us, the women of the company got to hear were some rumours about a conversation in the men’s sauna; there had been a topic, who are the hotties in the company and more sexist bullshit. All this sounds crazy to be true but this is true, and it happens in many industries, also with much worse acts. It happens in the film industry, as we have seen in the news with the Harvey Weinstein case and just this week with Kevin Spacey (#metoo from the gay point of view). It happens in advertising and elsewhere in creative business – and I bet it happens in almost every industry.

It is so unfortunate that through the ages men have got the “loose cards” whether it’s about the use of a whore stamp or their choices and credibility. Men can do many kinds of choices and it won’t affect to their next moves that much – no matter if we are talking about a work specific role or the fact that those are women that get pregnant. When a man looks good, he is charming. Often when a woman looks good it is thought that she is not that good at what she’s doing. I hate the fact that last time this autumn I myself had a thought that a woman looked hot to be a biochemist – and another case; to be an astronomer. I started slapping myself immediately “YOU can’t be involved in screwing up women’s position!” We women need to take care that we won’t put each other down – too often – when we actually get the support from the male gender – we are the ones ourselves who slow down our success by being jealous and reluctant to support each other. Anyway, I’m sure one thing is something that we all women agree to: we are not begging for grabs or any kind of sexual harassment when we dress up and look good or sexy. After all we are dressing up! I had a white close-fitting dress when that boss man was harassing me. And no, I didn’t ask for it nor it was my fault. Period.

Another thing that I’ve been thinking goes a bit further. How many women has surrendered and given sex to prevent even worse: a rape? This is an interesting question and very tacit knowledge. But I bet that if the statistic bureaus over the globe would start asking this, the results would cause breaking news again. I started thinking this when I was watching the horrendous Netflix document The Keepers, which is about the wide sexual abuse case that happened in Baltimore from the 60s onwards when a Catholic priest and teacher Father Joseph Maskell was abusing and raping tens of girls and boys with his fellow men. This scumbag never got any sentence before our trusted Karma gave him malignant Alzheimer’s at the age of 60 and he died soon and relatively young. Maskell’s victims had experienced such bad trauma that they forgot the incidents for decades – this is called traumatic memory. The whole series started from the murder of sister Cathy who had tried to stop the abuse. Watch this document! It makes you defence yours and others body till death!

I saw sexual harassment in a humoristic genre when I watched Master of None. On the second season the main character Dev – actor and host by his profession – sets up a cooking show together with a top chef Jeff. They name it pretty closely “Best Food Friends”. Soon Dev is screwed because of this “best friendship” because Chef Jeff is caught of women’s sexual harassment. First, when I was watching the show I thought how bad Jeff’s acts actually are. I mean you have to approach another sex somehow to make acquaintance. But Chef Jeff wasn’t baking with clean flour because he was misusing his status and power. This is what the creators of the show bring up: that men have practised subjugation and manipulation of women for ages. In the New York times interview Alan Yang – who has created the show together with “Dev” Aziz Ansari and who plays in it too – tells that someone in the writer’s room had asked if the scene is relevant still after a year when the episode comes out. Ansari and Yang had replied that it (sexual abuse) will never end. Then the Bill O’Reilly case came out and Yang texted Ansari “Another Chef Jeff!” And new chefs in the soup come up all the time! All this reflects from the history, all the way from the women’s non-voting rights. Men have got used to see women as outsiders and walk-ons. But we live 2017 now and got to understand that all kind of degrading, arrogance, commenting and tasteless behaviour, controlling and mastery is sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is misuse of the physically stronger male gender. The craziest part is that my PERSEcutor (so funny; PERSE means ass in Finnish) is actually driving women’s rights. Well that’s great if he has looked into mirror and disgusted himself too.

Already based on my experience I can tell that it has affected me, just wondering how much, and how it has shaped my personality. If I would get a free appointment to a shrink I would love to go and clear my head from these questions. In the end this life is about learning what is good for you – it is about learning to take care of others but mostly of yourself. So define, what is “ME OK.” Sometimes it’s difficult because there is and of course there must be humour between us people. Sometimes we have had quite a wild conversation with my male friends and afterwards I might have thought if that was something pleasant to promote women’s position. Just like the music I love; rap music is so women objectively and you hear bitch or ho all the time, not to mention how the music videos look. But how you change a culture that has existed for decades and that works as twisted it is! There the b/h-word is just like n-word; it is the thing but only allowed by the rappers or the black. Weird set!

To close up, I guess the throughout rule could be that when something is yucky it’s not ok. Overall, it is hard to understand what kind of satisfaction men get from talking dirty to women (not their partners). This is so common, we women run to it too often. I remember once when an ex-colleague booked me a hotel room and I asked about the size of the bed because I wanted to have a double bed instead of a narrow single. Somehow he managed to turn the discussion to his penis size – king size yeah right! Such stuff is so frustrating as well as all the lip lickers, tit talkers etc. there are so many types! In the end, it doesn’t even matter how you look – as long as you have this beautiful thing called pussy it is for sure that there are enough abusers. But I have decided that I will show to those fuckers that have fucked around with me! At the same time I highly respect the men that are gentlemen as I respect all the beautiful human, animal and organism in this world.